Crazy Tournament Day, 20+ Pounds But No Check Or Points

70+mm of Osage, creek channel banks with mixed rock and laydowns and docks. Presentation was slow.

Yesterday, Saturday, “The Great Wayne” Wayne Fitzpatrick and I practiced for the Anglers in Action Team Trail tournament on Sunday. We put the boat in at the Wigwam ramp at the 66MM of the Osage, aka as the river area. We were hunting for warm weather and a big fish bite on creek channel banks with mixed rocks, also fishing some docks with a bit deeper water and leading to spawning pockets off the main lake. We had our hooks covered so not to stick any fish that might need for the tournament. We had at least 30 bites, with most of the bites coming on the finesse jig and the tube. Of the 6 banks in creeks that we checked we had bites on everyone of them, but about 4 of them we had better bites and more bites. Those 4 were the creeks we were headed for on Sunday morning.

Sunday, Wayne and I were boat number 7, we took off at 7:05 AM after running hard for 50-60 minutes, running 50+ miles, w slowed the boat down as we came onto a bunch of spoonbill snagging boats, as we past these boats Wayne tried to accelerate toward our first cove and my boat shot craps, no compression and kept dying after re-starting. So after a few minutes of fussing with the boat and 2 other tournaments boats flying past us into the cove we were headed for, we finally realized we were kind of screwed, as we were 50 miles away, no motor and no cell phone service. So, our plan was to troll with the trolling motor into the cove, fish that cove, stay in that cove all day and hope we can flag down a tournament fishing team that would take us back to PB2 later in the day so we could weigh fish that we caught. About 10AM we were able to flag down a boat, we told them our story and they agreed to come back and check on us later in the day. So, Wayne and I went to work fishing about every inch of that cove. The bite was really on, we caught at least 30 bass and 8+ keepers, I lost count. We had at least 19-23 pounds of bass with our best 5 fish for the tournament. About 1:30, Wayne suggested that we should try to find some home/dock owner in the cove that we could tie up our boat to for the ride back to PB2 with the team that we thought were coming back for us. We found the nicest lady that let us tie up, use her phone to call the tournament director and others that might be worried if we did not make it back. Well, the tournament fisherman that were coming to check on us, never showed up. So about 2:00 with a load of fish in the live well, we realized that we were not going to get back to the weigh in, so we chucked our big fish back into the lake, taking one picture of our smallest keeper of the best 5, see picture. After we tied up, the very nice lady actually took me to a local convenience store for some beer while Wayne worked the phones to see if we could find a way to get back to Osage Beach. Waynes neighbor and good friend Jim Verhoef and his son Ben Verhoef (my son Rob’s fishing partner), went and picked up my trailer from Formula Boats, drove an hour to Edwards, MO – about 5 miles from Warsaw and picked us up. Fortunately Wayne spotted a broken up ramp in the cove, Wayne winched the boat onto the trailer and we drove back to Osage Beach, reflecting on our catch, speculating on what the hell went wrong with my boat and enjoying some beer and good camaraderie with Jim and Ben Verhoef. When we finally hit civilization again, we talked to my son and were informed that 20#’s won the tourney. Wayne and I are confident that we would have either finished first of at least top 3, but no check to show for a great day tournament fishing. We dropped the boat off at Formula Boats for ace mechanic Dan Bowman to look at tomorrow and see what went wrong. All in all, while disappointing, Wayne and I had a great time jerking on a lot of fish and a lot of big fish after just leading them around in practice.